PHILADELPHIA Senate and House Republicans came to their GOP retreat here to get on the same page on Obamacare , to figure out the broad strokes of a health care alternative and to emerge with a unified message.

That did not happen.

Republicans left town Friday with still more questions than answers on an Obamacare alternative, and the only thing lawmakers truly seem to agree on is that the Affordable Care Act needs to go.

On Wednesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) laid out a timeline for repealing major parts of the 2010 health care law through a reconciliation process before April. At that point, the secretary of health and human services would begin issuing new guidance on Obamacare, which the lawmakers seem ready to consider part of a replacement.

And then ... theyve offered little idea what happens next, how long it will take or what it will end up.

Republicans talk broadly about incorporating some elements theyve already agreed to in the past, like expanding health savings accounts, creating high-risk pools and lifting barriers to the purchase of insurance plans across state lines. But those ideas alone assume that some crippled version of Obamacare remains in place and that Republicans in both chambers go along with gutting the health care system without a real replacement plan. The closer Republicans get to the sticking point, though, the more some lawmakers will want policy particulars, which their leaders simply dont have.

When HuffPost asked House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) on Friday for the proposed details of the replacement plan, he focused on the repeal.

What weve looked at is as many things as we can put in a reconciliation bill that not just deal with a repeal but also a replace, Scalise said. He then explained that the measure ripping apart the law will contain only small portions of an Obamacare alternative because of Senate rules barring new policies in a reconciliation bill. After they pass that repeal, he said, Republicans would start moving some other things through the legislative process.

One of the flaws with Obamacare there were many was that [then-Speaker] Nancy Pelosi literally wrote the bill in a room with maybe two or three other people the night before the vote and nobody read the bill before they voted on it, Scalise said.

While its true the law enacted in 2010 included its fair share of backroom deals, the substance of the Affordable Care Act was the subject of a lengthy, open debate that started during the 2008 presidential campaign and continued in Congress for about a year with some 130 public hearings across five committees.